


Fantasia on a Theme Immemorial

by aoife_hime



Category: Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:17:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aoife_hime/pseuds/aoife_hime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Polly and Tom had lived a secret life together for many years.  When the person you are hiding from is the Queen of the Faeries, though, perhaps discovery is inevitable.  But what happens then?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fantasia on a Theme Immemorial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yosituna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yosituna/gifts).



**I. Allegro con brio**

**  
**

Polly’s second thought upon seeing the dragon was a deep and profound hope that the walls of the installation, with their near-priceless portraits from centuries ago, would remain un-scorched.  Her first was, understandably, a string of shock-induced profanities for which Granny would have had her tongue scoured with soap if she ever let them pass her lips coupled with an instinctive urge to run quickly in what she presumed to be a safe direction.  She had, of course, done just that, sprinting through the empty gallery with a familiar swiftness that was comforting even as the rumblings of the creature behind her caused her skin to prickle in fear.

 

As her feet carried her swiftly past white-washed walls hung with damaged art from religious and political feuds of the past, Polly had to stifle the hysterical noise – possibly a laugh, possibly a scream – threatening to bubble up from her chest.  Of all the places to encounter a dragon, it was in an art exhibit filled with already damaged art.  Not that a few extra singes wouldn’t go unnoticed, but perhaps some of the claw marks at least could be explained away.  As she thought that, she caught a glimpse over her shoulder of a long talon striking a painting of what could only be a politician.  The canvas ripped, or perhaps it was that the talon found a talon-shaped gouge and fit itself neatly into it – it really was difficult to tell sometimes.

 

A frustrated roar behind her brought her mind promptly back to the matter at hand: namely, that there was a moderately large and unaccountably infuriated fire-breathing reptile close behind her who needed to be slain.

 

“And, naturally, I left my broadsword at home today,” she muttered breathlessly.  _Or rather, forgot to buy one in the first place_ , amended her consciousness, the mental correction to her vain attempt at humor somehow managing to incite a small giggle that lodged somewhere in her throat as she continued to run.

 

The last room of the gallery was a large, open space with a few white, modern-looking backless benches in the middle of it so that visitors who found themselves tired of standing and looking at art could sit and look at art instead.  Normally filled with people, the only occupant now was a long, black umbrella that someone had forgotten.  It lay across one of the plastic benches, its black folds still damp from the downpour that was probably still going on outside.  A puddle had already formed on the bench that was certainly unappreciated by patrons and museum employees alike.

 

Polly raced to it, the shiny, fake wood of the curved handle slipping in her now-sweaty hands as she fumbled slightly in picking it up.  Something in her chest leaped, though in excitement this time instead of fear, and she leveled the umbrella in front of her as she put her back to the gift shop entrance.  In her mind, she knew what she held was an umbrella.  However, she could see, too, that the edges wanted to mould themselves into something sleeker, something sharper.  She could still feel fake wood clenched tightly between her fingers, but she could feel the worn leather of a well-wrapped grip, too.  The umbrella swished and sang as she swung it precisely through the air in quick practice.  Not a broadsword, precisely, but it would have to do.

 

The plume of smoke that flooded the gallery just then was laced with brimstone and followed by a core-rattling snarl.  The smoke was so thick, it dimmed the austere lighting of the gallery so the world was nothing more than shifting shadows.  Truly, she was in the heart of the dragon’s lair.  Polly made the mistake of gasping in a lungful of the noxious smoke in her surprise and spent the next few moments coughing and sputtering like Tom’s old car when it didn’t want to start.  Her eyes stung and tears blurred her vision, but still she kept her umbrella-sword raised.

 

When the dragon attacked, Polly didn’t so much see it as sense it.  The smoke shifted with a slithering rush and Polly struck instinctively at the space to her left.  There was a moment of her weapon biting through scale and flesh, but it was over almost before it began.  A piece of brimstone caught Polly across her left arm as more smoke billowed into the gallery-lair, but her cry was swallowed by the enraged roar of the dragon at having taken what was likely only a superficial blow.

 

The umbrella-sword felt heavier in her hands as she attempted to regain her bearings.  Her left arm burned and ached and the smoke made it hard to breathe without coughing.  Smoke and scales slithered and rushed off to her right this time, but Polly did not strike.  Offensively striking with only half her bearing gotten would do her no good.  She curled in on herself slightly as a fit of coughs threatened to overtake her, her sword still raised as best she could manage.

 

The dragon chose that moment to attack.

 

Polly was in the midst of a cough when she suddenly found herself bracing her weapon between the powerful jaws of the reptilian beast.  Her body had reacted even before her conscious mind had time to process the slithering that had rushed her headlong.  For a moment, they stood there, deadlocked with Polly’s umbrella-sword lodged between the dragon’s sharp teeth.  The heat from its breath scorched her skin as they were locked in their stalemate of an embrace and a few more pieces of brimstone came rumbling up from its throat as it screeched in annoyance and pain.  One struck her across the cheek; she could feel its fiery trail distinctly even though each breath was as hot as a furnace.

 

With a strangled yell, Polly freed herself from the dragon’s attack.  She spun quickly, blindly, to the right before moving in to attack the dragon’s flank.  Though the room was nothing more than a cavern of thick smoke and shadows by now and the art that lined the walls had all but vanished, she was close enough to the dragon that she could make out its dark scales even in the dim light.  The creature shifted, though, with a preternatural swiftness that would have taken Polly’s breath away if the ensuing clash between teeth and steel didn’t do so instead.  She freed herself more quickly this time, her frustrated cry masking the fear that was slowly clawing its way up her chest and into her throat.

 

With that fear, a memory was fighting its way to the forefront of her consciousness.  Teeth and fire, smoke and pain, and afterwards… a comforting arm around her shoulders and pair of cold, knowing eyes amidst the concerned friends and emergency medical personnel. 

 

This had happened before.

 

A roar sounded and almost at the same time Polly’s body went into a spasm of coughs that had her doubled over.  Panic settled in around the base of her throat and squeezed even as her lungs pleaded for air.  Something seared across her right shoulder, though whether it was fire or claws, Polly did not know.  She rolled away from the pain on instinct, her knees crashing to the floor as her body curled in on itself further.  Her body only stopped when her back connected firmly with a wall, the back of her head following a second later.

 

Stunned, Polly lay frozen for a moment before she realized her hands were empty.  A sudden urgency of survival shot through her and she groped blindly for her umbrella-sword even as she started to become very aware of the new pain across her right shoulder.  Pain and heat raced through what felt like every nerve on that side of her body but she didn’t stop, instead rolling onto her knees and searching more urgently.

 

After what seemed like ages but was likely far shorter than that, her fingers caught the oddly sharp edge of folded nylon.  Polly rushed forward, hands and knees slamming into the floor haphazardly as impossibly cool scales brushed and tore at her trousers.  Her hands trembled strongly as they reached for the umbrella-sword’s grip, so much so that she almost dropped the weapon.  Shallow breaths were all she could manage without coughing, and she was dizzy with panic and lack of oxygen, but she somehow managed to mould her hands around the grip once more and steady herself.

 

_A hero does not drop her weapon.  Though she may falter, she always rises…_

 

A crackle sounded.  Polly rose, umbrella-sword carried upward by adrenaline, momentum, and sheer strength of will.  There was resistance, followed quickly by the sickening scythe sound of metal cutting flesh and a piercing wail that was as deafening as a siren pressed up against her ear.  Something warm flowed along the umbrella-sword and onto Polly’s hands, her arms, her face…

 

Above her, the dragon, still keening its death cry, faltered.  Gravity proved too enticing and Polly felt the beast sway, dragging her still-lodged umbrella-sword with it.  Her hands refused to listen to her for a few moments, the tendons so ferociously bent on keeping her weapon in hand at all times after it being lost once that even the threat of a falling dragon wasn’t enough to shake their grip.  She stumbled two awkward steps to her right, her feet crossing in front and behind each other like a drunken folk dance in an attempt to remain upright.  It was this threat to her balance, oddly enough, that finally convinced her oxygen-deprived brain to give up its hold on the weapon.

 

Polly had just enough time to trip backwards a few steps before the dragon collapsed entirely.  She still could not see its entire body amidst the thick smoke, and even if there had been less smoke, she wasn’t certain that she was in any state to believe her eyes.  What must have been scales glinted throughout the room in the ambient light the chunks of smouldering brimstone emitted. 

 

Polly’s momentum continued carrying her back, her steps weaving to and fro until the backs of her calves connected with hard plastic and she, too, found herself succumbing to gravity’s cruel charms.

 

 _It’s odd_ , she thought, as her body crumpled further and further until a pain flaired up her right side from where her hip had none-too-gently met the plastic bench.  _The dragon is still crying out even though it is dead…_

 

**II. Andante con moto**

 

“You are lucky to be alive, you know that, right?”

 

Polly blinked.  Then she blinked again, harder this time and scrunching up her cheeks with the effort.  Still, her vision refused to clear.

 

 _Well, this is another strange thing_ , she thought idly, tilting her head to one side in what might have been considered a quizzical gesture by some but was really just her head searching for the pillow it had been becoming well acquainted with over the last however many hours.  _Tom is being rather transparent today._ Polly giggled.  Transparent, that was funny.  Because Tom was being both overtly protective and Polly was having a hard time deciding whether or not he was actually here or not.  A giggle slipped out from between her lips, as light and as and slippery as a soap bubble, only without the horrid aftertaste.

 

Tom’s brows drew closer in what Polly assumed was concern but was likely also consternation.

 

Hmmm… maybe laughing at the jokes running in distracting circles around her brain like a drunken horse wasn’t the best thing to do right now.  Polly bit her lip, or at least she attempted to do so.  It was hard to tell when all sensations were pleasantly dulled.  Her head felt like it was detached from her spine and she felt, well, giddy was really the only word for it.  Also possibly a tad nauseated, but she couldn’t bring herself to care much at the moment.

 

She tried to focus once more on Tom, but he was still as transparent as before and if she stared at him for too long, a pain started to throb behind her eyes.  Staring at him when he had one foot in the Now and Here and the other in the Here and Now was a task nearly as impossible as pinning a wave to the shore; the human brain simply could not reconcile something being in two places and yet one place at once in such a way.  Polly gave a soft sigh and closed her eyes.  Not that he had much of a choice, she thought.  It wasn’t as if she was in any fit state to navigate the path along the Now and Here when she was attached to noisy monitors for her heart rate and oxygen levels and likely being guarded by a team of nurses who would notice if their new patient popped out of her room, however momentarily.

 

“There was a dragon, dear,” she said, eyes still closed.  Polly hoped that her words came out as clear as she thought they had, though with sedatives, it was so hard to tell.  “Had to fight it.”

 

Tom made a soft of clicking noise with his tongue.  It was the sort of noise he made when he was annoyed about something.  “You could have run away,” he huffed, a petulant note creeping in his voice.  Polly felt the corners of her mouth drift upwards; it was almost adorable, if it weren’t quite so infuriating.

 

“Could have, but didn’t.  Had to fight.  Dragon could’ve gotten loose otherwise.  Was too close to Here.  I barely had crossed through when it attacked,” she argued.  She felt a fierce sort of energy burning in her chest, but distantly, as if in a dream.  She may not be fifteen anymore, but she was still agile and strong enough to take on a dragon.  Eyes still closed, she set her jaw in a firm line that conveyed her stubbornness on this point as effectively as any words.  She knew Tom had relented when she heard his resigned sigh.

 

It was a very familiar sigh.

 

“The official story is that there was some sort of electrical fire or something in one of the back stairwells and the smoke spread to the gallery you were in,” he said finally.  “Plausible, as stories go, though the doctors were rather perplexed by your burns and bruises.”  Polly hummed her assent.  Said burns and bruises were as insubstantial and diaphanous as a dream upon the first moments of waking, though undoubtedly she would not feel as serene about the situation when the pain medication wore off.

 

“If you don’t watch yourself,” continued Tom, “you’ll become the news item of the week.  It’s not every day that someone inhales as much smoke as you did today and lives.  As it is, you’re already famous enough with the A&E staff here for my comfort.”

 

Polly felt one corner of her mouth curl up a little further into what was currently passing as her bemused smirk.  It probably looked more like a dopey leer, but since half her face was still squashed against her pillow and her only visitor was Tom, it didn’t really matter.

 

“Might be good publicity,” she mumbled half into her pillow.  “Melissa wants to do more of that anyways.”

 

“I’m not sure that near-death by smoke inhalation and fire is quite the publicity your publicist had in mind when she suggested it.”

 

“You don’t know Melissa very well, obviously.”

 

“If that’s the case, it might be time to find a different publicist.”  Despite having her eyes closed still, Polly could tell Tom was smiling as he suggested it.  Joking, this was good.  Tom always did levity better than severity anyways.  She smiled, fully this time, in return.

 

“How long can you stay?” she asked after a moment of comfortable silence, trying to inject something of tone of brightness into her words.  Polly opened her eyes drowsily but still her eyes and brain couldn’t agree on whether she could see Tom or not.  It was incredibly frustrating and she let her eyes fall closed as her brow furrowed in annoyance.  She heard him sigh.

 

“Not long.  We have our dress rehearsal in an hour, and it’ll take at least forty minutes to get back to the theater at this time of day.”  There was a pause.  “Will you be alright by yourself for a few hours?  I could have Ann give Fiona a call to come and keep you company.”

 

Perhaps it was the effects of the pain medication, but Polly’s throat started tightening up and her nose suddenly felt all sharp and prickly on the inside.  Her chest was a tight swirl of emotions that normally lay nicely dormant and therefore were readily ignorable: helplessness, anger, sadness, yearning… and all of them irrationally poignant, damn them.

 

All she had wanted was one date.  One simple, pleasant lunch date in between the stressors of the Dumas Quartet’s latest concert series and Polly’s latest impending publication.  Just an hour or so alone with Tom in between the oddly-timed rehearsals and the late nights pouring over fourth and fifth and hundredth drafts.  She and Tom had both been busy enough in the last month that the time they had left over to spend with each other was limited.

 

And it wasn’t just in the past month, if Polly was being honest (which apparently she was, even if honesty seemed intimately linked with melodrama today).  The past year had been a series of dashed meetings and nights spent waiting up too late and then, when they were finally able to meet, finding something in the way.  Like a dragon, though there had been other monstrous creations of the Now and Here as well: dim-witted giants and angry trolls and unnamable beasts with claws like scythes and breath that reeked of decay.  Playing the hero was all well and good, but even heroes deserved a few days off every once in a while.

 

She kept up a fiercely independent façade for all but her closest friends in the Here and Now, but behind that act was a magnificent yet exhaustingly secretive life that she’d built with Tom over the years.  It was a life spent balanced on the precarious boundary between what was and what could be, a life spent looking into the aether that was (as far as Polly was concerned) the magic of creation and having sense enough not to succumb to its thrall.  But as beautiful as that sort of a life was, their life together only worked when they were able _be_ together.  And that was becoming more of a Herculean feat as the months and years rolled by.

 

So really, was one normal date really too much to ask?  It frustrated her to the point of tears that apparently, the answer was yes.  Polly could feel the warmth of them spreading across her lashes and she closed her eyes just a little more tightly to stop them from leaking out onto her cheeks and pillow. 

 

“I’ll be fine.”  Polly hoped that her voice was muffled enough by the pillow that Tom missed the crack in it.  He probably didn’t, and Polly didn’t open her eyes, partly for fear of seeing his sad, knowing expression upon hearing it and partly to prevent releasing the tears still gathering there.  “Really,” she added.  “I think Fiona said she was busy tonight, anyways.  Some retirement party for someone at work or something.”

 

Tom made a non-committal sort of hum, the kind that said he didn’t believe her but he would go along with her pretense for the sake of her pride.  It was one of the many things she loved about him, this ability to know what she needed even if what she needed didn’t make sense, even to her.  Rationally, it would be nice to have Fiona around: once the pain was under control and the reason you were there in the first place was well under way of being treated, hospitals were a rather boring place to spend any length of time.  But right now, Polly needed some time to herself.  Emotional turmoil aside, there were other things that required some dedicated thought.

 

Like how Laurel knew to attract the dragon in the museum’s Now and Here space just in time for Polly and Tom’s date.

 

**III. Allegro**

 

Polly awoke sometime in the night with a rather undignified snort.  For a brief instant of panic, she was completely at a loss for where she was.  It took her a couple of calming breaths to orient herself.  The light seeping in from under her door illuminated the room enough that she could make out her steadily blinking heart rate monitor, cluttered bedside tray table, and the empty IV stand.  The hospital, right.  There had been a dragon instead of Tom and that’s how she ended up in a marginally comfortable and wholly strange bed.  She was on her back, too, which didn’t help matters: when she was on her back, she tended to snore, hence her unintentional arousal.

 

For the space of a couple more breaths, she thought that it was just the snore that had woken her.  She quickly revised that thought, though, when she became aware of the very real pain in both of her shoulders.  She could feel each seared, severed, or twisted nerve ending firing an unhappy slew of signals and complaints at her brain now that they were no longer being dulled by her pain medication.  Polly gasped, or at least she tried to, but she was interrupted mid-breath by a deep coughing jag that left her seeing stars and almost as exhausted as fighting a dragon in the first place.  Her shoulders ached even more fiercely than before and she had a taste in her mouth akin to what she imagined old charcoal must taste like.

 

Blindly, she groped along the bedside table for the cup she knew the nurse had left there that was filled with water.  Her shoulder complained quite vociferously, but eventually her fingertips brushed Styrofoam.  Trying to actually grasp the cup, however, caused a new set of problems, as Polly couldn’t quite convince her wrist to turn to the correct angle without setting off a chain reaction of pain all the way up her arm and across her back.  The pain had the added effect of triggering a few more bone-rattling coughs that left her throat feeling raw on top of everything else and Polly sank back into her pillow in defeat.

 

Dragons were one thing.  Hospital cups, though, were apparently in a completely different league.

 

For a few disconcerting moments after being so thoroughly thwarted, Polly’s gaze remained on her bedside table.  Part of her thought of reaching for the call light to request assistance.  Something else was itching at the corner of her mind, though, a niggling little feeling that there was something different but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what.  As keen as her thirst was and as awful as the taste of stale dragon smoke was in her mouth, there was something more pressing that demanded her attention.  The dim light from under the door provided just enough light for her eyes to make out everything that rested on the fake wood surface.

 

Her cup was there, full of water and just out of reach, along with the plastic bag of her smaller possessions she’d had on her person at the time of the dragon attack and had been kindly collected by whoever brought her in.  Some papers, hospital information that she already knew well enough to recite nearly by rote after all of her visits over the years, were there as well along with a couple of cheap pens that ran out of ink every two words or so.  A funny little plastic device one of the nurses had tried to explain had something to do with her breathing sat there quietly right next to a single pale rose.

 

Polly felt something in the very pit of her stomach freeze.  Tom hadn’t brought any flowers.  Tom hadn’t even been enough in the Here and Now to have been able to leave a flower behind.  And after he left, the only visitors she’d had were the nurses.  As nice as they were, Polly knew they didn’t make a habit of leaving flowers for their patients.

 

She reached for the rose.  It had too many leaves, and the leaves it had were too small for rose leaves.  She was more easily able to grasp it than she was the cup and with a jolt she realized the rose was in the place where her cup had been before she’d fallen asleep.  A part of her knew she should have been at the very least unnerved by this and quite possibly frightened, but all Polly felt was a liquid sort of anger that was starting to seep into her pain-addled limbs.

 

Despite the extra leaves, the pad of her thumb did not escape unscathed as she brought the rose closer for inspection.  The quick burst of pain was a welcome distraction from her other injuries and she sucked on her thumb absently as she inspected her inexplicable gift in what little light there was to be had in her room.

 

The closer inspection revealed that it was not actually the rose that had too many leaves of the wrong size, but rather that someone had woven a second plant expertly around the stem of the rose so that the two plants were perfectly entwined.  It almost seemed as if they had grown that way in the first place, and Polly wasn’t entirely sure that they hadn’t. 

 

It seemed very much like Laurel to bend nature to her whim, especially where her namesake was concerned.   

 

Polly huffed a small sigh in frustration.  The anger born moments earlier had quickly spread to all corners of her body and it was making her restless.  She had always had a difficult time with inaction and holding back long enough to think things through when challenged directly; it was a fault that had caused her no end of problems in the past, including the years she had spent living with her false memories.  Even now, Polly wanted nothing more than to leap from her bed, hospital gown likely gaping in the back, and march through the Now and Here until she found Laurel and confronted her.  No one, not even the Queen of the Faeries, was allowed to leave her threatening presents in her hospital room in the middle of the night.

 

Polly looked once more at the flower in her hand.  Where the laurel was the signature, the rose was the message.  By any standard, roses weren’t exactly the most threatening sort of gift.  Still, she couldn’t help but feel that the rose was a message, delivered in that directly subtle way in which Laurel and all of her faerie kind were so adept.  The mere fact that it was present in her room at all was as good as any verbal threat Laurel could have spouted if she had stayed long enough to see Polly awaken from her drug-facilitated slumber.  But there had to be more to it than that; Laurel was not so simple a creature as to merely make bald shows of power. 

 

It came to her amidst a countless number of what would ultimately turn out to be fruitless revenge scenarios.  While white roses frequently symbolized purity and innocence, there was another side to the story that Polly had come across years ago in history class.  The romantic in her had been so taken with the idea that she had tried to incorporate it into any number of her early stories, but ultimately she never had succeeded in finding an original avenue for the concept.  The idea came from the War of the Roses: allegedly, the white rose at that time signified death to any man who betrayed his word.  Once her brain had alighted on the notion, Polly knew she was right.

 

How like Laurel to send such a message through a flower.  Inconspicuous as usual, though perhaps a little more direct than Polly was used to. 

 

A small curl of uncertainty formed beneath her still-spreading anger.  Laurel wasn’t necessarily one for death threats, not when she had death contracts that were fulfilled as regularly as clockwork, despite Polly and Tom’s efforts to thwart them.  But such a message could only mean one thing: Laurel knew.  She knew that Polly and Tom did not live completely separate lives, in spite of their efforts to make it appear as if that were the case.  Laurel knew that in the absolute, black and white sense of the term, Polly had seen Tom on any number of occasions since that fateful day she had saved him from being Laurel’s sacrifice.

 

It probably shouldn’t have been nearly as much of a shock as it was; before falling asleep that night, Polly had been trying to work out how Laurel could possibly have known where and when to send that dragon.  If Laurel had known about the date in the first place, it would certainly be better than Polly’s previous best explanation, which was the faerie equivalent of dumb luck.  It would also explain why so many of her dates with Tom recently had turned into fights to the death with what Tom was beginning to call the ‘creature of the week’.  Thinking even further back, it also went a ways towards explaining things like how the Dumas Quartet seemed more and more to play at venues that necessitated awkward dress rehearsal times.  All of Polly’s speaking engagements as well, the outreach programs that had the dates or times or even the locations switched after she had committed to them… they all spoke to Laurel’s interference.

 

All of these things had been happening for months, even years, now, but they had been building so slowly that it was easy to write it off as being just another trial of adult life.  But that was what Laurel did best: work her will quietly, little by little, day by day until what she willed seemed normal and ‘normal’ was just a distant memory.

 

Polly sat still for a moment, her anger and the little twist of fear warring with each other as her burns and bruises throbbed insistently and the small tear of her thumb twinged soggily.  There were almost too many unpleasant thoughts and feelings going on at once to be able to focus on any one in particular.  In short, she felt miserable.  Misery, though, in its pure unpleasantness, afforded Polly something of a sense of clarity and sobriety.

 

Laurel knew Polly had broken her word in the absolute sense of it, the word that had saved Tom all those years ago and that they had been navigating their way around ever since.  Until now, the Queen had been content to play, inhabiting the roll of the cat who played with her food before gobbling it down with great aplomb.  Now, though, it seemed she was done playing.  What her reasons were for altering the status quo, Polly did not know, but with someone as inscrutable as Laurel, a person could spend a thousand lifetimes pondering a single whim and still never know the absolute truth of the matter.  All that truly could be said was that Laurel had made her position as clear as she ever made anything. 

 

Now, it was Polly’s turn to respond.  She didn’t know how, exactly, but as she lay awake in her hospital bed, she began to think she might have something of a chance at beating Laurel at her game once and for all.

 

**IV. Allegro (reprise)**

“I promise, Melissa, I am more than fine.  Couldn’t be feeling better, in fact,” Polly fibbed over the phone.  Her right arm still ached fiercely when she tried to lift anything heavier than a box of tissues and her lungs still spasmed in coughing fits if she walked too quickly to the Tube.  On top of that, the phone booth she was currently occupying was drafty and the late autumn chill made her nose start to run.  She did her best to sniffle quietly lest her publicist think she was coming down with the flu on top of her recent misadventure with extreme smoke inhalation.  “You don’t have to worry – I’ll be fine for tomorrow’s talk with the primary school.  Ten o’clock, right?”

 

She half listened as Melissa rambled off what was very likely important information about the event tomorrow, but it wasn’t as if Polly didn’t already have everything written down back at her flat so that she wouldn’t forget it come morning.  The part of her brain that wasn’t listening to Melissa’s nervous rambling, which was a substantial part indeed, was intent on the building down the street from the phone booth.

 

It was a grand building, naturally; it seemed that all buildings after a certain time became ‘grand’ even if they had never been intended as such.  This building had very likely always been grand, though, even hundreds of years ago when it was a church.  Now that it was a concert hall, there were hidden spotlights filling the high archways with golden light, accentuating the baroque architecture so all could better admire its splendor.  Two large red signs advertising that night’s concert were propped up on either side of the center door at the top of a flight of stone steps.  Someone paced outside the closed doors, a heavy-set man in a hat, his coat pulled up to his ears and his cigarette releasing little puffs of white smoke every few paces.  Polly could imagine that behind the doors, the Dumas Quartet was finishing up a truly magnificent concert of Beethoven’s late string quartets interspersed with Britten and Schubert, but there was no way she could actually hear the music.

 

A quick breath of the evening’s cold air tickled her lungs just then and caused an unavoidable coughing fit.  Miles away on the other end of the telephone, Melissa went off about Polly’s health, or rather her lack thereof.  Grimacing and coughing were hard to do at the same time, but Polly managed it, and her coughing had the added benefit of drowning out the shrillness of her publisher’s worrying.

 

“Honestly, Melissa, I’m fine,” Polly managed to fit in when her publicist paused to breathe and her own lungs had settled down enough.  “And I’ll still be fine by tomorrow morning.  I have the directions all written out and I shouldn’t have any trouble finding the school.  And no, you really don’t have to send a car for me, I can manage just fine on my own.”  She paused as she saw people beginning to file out the doors of the concert hall.  Many of them wore long, expensive coats and walked with that leisurely purpose that the rich have been perfecting over the centuries.  In her ear, Melissa’s voice started up once more, not missing a beat.  This time, Polly didn’t even bother waiting for a pause; she said her good byes and hung up while her publicist was still talking.  Melissa would be upset for a few hours, Polly rationalized as she pushed her way roughly out of the phone booth and into the cold night air, but it would all blow over by the next day.  Melissa could never manage to hold a grudge against Polly for very long.

 

Polly walked briskly along the damp sidewalk as the crowd continued to flow out of the main doors.  With her jaw set against the cold and her pale hair flowing behind her, she felt a little wild and rather unforgiving, as if she were the monster for a change instead of the hero.  From the way some of the fine ladies looked down their noses at her as she hurried past, she was pretty sure they saw her as something of a monster as well.  Little did they know that the real monster had been sitting among their ranks all evening.  Or perhaps they did know, only they were each too much of a monster to truly care.

 

A lady with what might have been a taxidermied pigeon nesting in her overly-teased hair sniffed in displeasure as Polly brushed by her.  A man with spats covering his well-shined shoes but nothing covering his equally well-shined head let out a disgruntled “well I say!” as Polly barely missed elbowing him in the stomach.  Normally, she would have turned around and apologized; Granny had taught her enough manners to manage that, at least.  As it was, she simply hurried forward a little faster than before, hoping that by the time they got around to complaining, Polly would be nothing more than a blonde ghost to them – a source of mystery and annoyance, nothing more.

 

As she neared the main stairs, the crowd thickened.  It became nearly impossible to move against it, and Polly’s elbows connected with quite a few persons in an attempt to press forward when everyone was doing their utmost to carry her backwards.  Once, someone’s elbow connected with her ribs.  She ended up coughing her way back down five steps before being able to once again begin fighting her way up towards the doors.

 

Still, people continued to exit the building in waves of expensive jewels and musty perfume.  For each gap in their ranks that Polly found and exploited, another five would be filled in by more people filing out of the hall.  Frustration burned and twisted inside of Polly, growing larger and more intense as she spent minute upon minute not gaining any substantial ground.  She tried being polite, excusing herself so frequently her throat began to go dry.  She tried being impolite as well, using her elbows and arms and hips to carve out a path for herself, but that was, if possible, even less successful.  It was only after she had found herself once again carried very nearly to the base of the steps that she stumbled upon a Way to the Now and Here.

 

Ways weren’t easy things to find, necessarily, though Polly had something of a gift at picking them out.  Of the two of them, Polly was far more adept at finding a Way than Tom; the Way she had found at the art museum was, for example, one of the first ones Polly had found after moving to London.  She and Tom had used it on more than one occasion, before it had been commandeered by a dragon, that is.  There wasn’t anything starkly different about a Way that made it stand out from all the rest of the world around it, but once you found it, there was no mistaking it for anything other than what it was. 

 

Polly found this particular Way tucked into a shadowy bit of stair behind one of the columns.  It was nothing more than a little footpath, delineated only by a sense of some un-sung melody from ages past.  It rang out intangibly in Polly’s mind as she stepped onto the path.  She didn’t have time to dwell on it at that moment; there were more pressing matters to attend to.  And so it was that one moment, she was surrounded by concert goers fleeing the hall as if they were rats aboard a sinking ship while the next she was gloriously alone.  Her footsteps echoed softly among the high arches as she climbed, unchallenged, towards the main doors.

 

The lobby of the hall was as empty in the Now and Here as the stairs had been, though the space echoed with bodiless voices in an eerie imitation of its counterpart room in the Here and Now.  It was a rather unnerving effect, like a room full of ghosts without the chill, but again Polly didn’t have time to dwell on it.  She was grateful to find her path yet unhindered and walked quickly over refurbished marble tile to the main concert hall.  Polly peaked inside the gaping doors, but the concert hall was as empty as everywhere else in this part of the Now and Here.  All that was there was an end to her Way, which was tucked snuggly in along the corner of the right hand aisle underneath the balcony.

 

Polly squared her shoulders.  She had some idea of what she would find on the other end of the Way, or rather, who she would find.  Before her mind decided to back out, her legs propelled her forward and back into the Here and Now.  The transition was seamless; Polly stepped off the way with grace born of years of practice.

 

For one glorious moment, Polly faced a still-empty concert hall.  She was, it seemed, all alone.  Perhaps she had miscalculated…

 

“You’re here.”

 

But no.   

 

The voice, familiar and yet ever-strange, rang out like a clarion chime directly behind her.  It was at once beautiful and terrible, an inescapable reminder that there were gods (or things like gods that could be mistaken as such) that had walked the Earth once and they still did so today, only in slightly different form.  Polly wanted nothing more than to plug her ears and never hear such a voice again.  A part of her realized, though, that Laurel was doing that on purpose; her real voice (or at least what Polly considered her real voice) was as innocuous as a summer breeze.  This was just another game, or a part of a game, and the stubborn, angry part of Polly that had been with her since she was a child wasn’t about to let Laurel win before she had even truly begun.

 

Polly turned around slowly.  Laurel stood in the aisle directly behind her.  Her eerily pale hair was piled in an intricate crown on top of her head and glowed like a halo, what with the backlighting from the lobby.  Her clothing was perfect, too, from the low-cut yet still somehow modest deep blue gown to the glimmering silver bracelet at her wrist and the diamonds at her ears and throat that caught the light just so.  Polly couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t felt outclassed by Laurel, but tonight in particular she felt particularly feral in comparison.  Between her windswept hair, her day-old clothes, and the fact that her voice was barely able to speak without cracking from all of the coughing she was still doing, she might as well have been dragged in from the gutter.

 

“As are you,” she managed steadily, even with her heart beating somewhere in the middle of her throat.

 

Laurel smiled gently, an expression completely incongruous with what Polly knew of the Queen’s usual countenance.  “You will forgive me, dear Polly, but it is more of a surprise to see you in such a place.”  Though her words were mild and her voice returned more to normal, Polly felt nothing but a sinking sense of dread as her casual endearment and feigned shock.  “I, on the other hand, have long been a patron of the arts.”

 

“And what is the cost of your patronage?” snapped Polly before her brain or her fear could stop her tongue.  She felt her cheeks warm as Laurel’s smile grew more bemused.

 

“A fair price for what I offer, I assure you.  You may think me nothing more than one of your devils,” and at this, she turned her gaze to the vaulted ceilings and stately columns that were no doubt familiar with religious icons from the building’s former life, “but as long as there are men of such malleable mettle in this world, there will always be many willing to make such a bargain.  Not all, of course, are as _fortunate_ to have a hero such as yourself to rescue them from their so-called folly.”

 

The sneer that had appeared on Laurel’s face just then was a purely ugly expression.  It left Polly in no doubt of Laurel’s true feelings on the matter, which was oddly unnerving given all faeries’ penchants for indirectness and deception through half-truths.  Polly bit her tongue to prevent it from unleashing another ill-conceived retort.  Deprived of her sport, or perhaps just impatient, Laurel frowned slightly before continuing.

 

“I am pleased you understood my message from the other night, Polly.  I was fairly certain you would not be able to misunderstand something as prosaic and simple as a flower, though with humans, it is always astonishing what sort of messages fail to permeate your dull minds.  By now, I’m sure, you realize that your little secret life with Tom is no longer as clandestine as you once imagined it.”

 

Polly’s jaw clenched and her fingernails bit into her palms, but still she did not respond.  Laurel’s words were meant to taunt, to provoke, and most of all to hurt.  She had caused Polly’s biggest regret by playing to her embarrassment and temper all those years ago; Polly had since vowed that she would never let such rashness lead her or the people she loved into trouble.

 

“I realize you know more than you once did, yes,” she forced out measuredly.  Laurel seemed to be waiting for Polly to continue, but Polly merely pressed her lips together even tighter.

 

“You and Tom have been clever, I have to admit,” sighed Laurel.  Her delicate hand lifted to replace an errant strand of hair that didn’t exist.  The moment was mesmerizing in its gracefulness.  “Even when you were never to see him again, you have managed to find a way to skirt the deal we made for your own benefit.  How very resourceful of you.

 

“I am afraid, though, that a deal is still a deal.  Tom lives only because you were never to see him again.  You have seen him, of this I am certain, and because you have seen him, your deal with me is void.  Yes,” she said gravely, even as the hint of a predatory smile began to curl on her lips, “that does mean what you think it means.”

 

“Tom has to die.”  It wasn’t a question.  Polly felt the sense of certainty at her conclusion sitting in the pit of her stomach like a lead weight.  A lead weight that flopped and jostled as it sank, like a fish trying to feebly escape from a net.  In contrast to that, Laurel continued to look as serene as if she were discussing the concert she’d just attended.  She was a predator who knew she had her prey cornered once and for all.

 

“Very good, Polly,” Laurel praised, though her words rang hollowly in Polly’s ears.  “I knew you would catch on quickly.  There is something, though, that you may not have guessed yet.  In a case such as yours, I would be willing to accept a proxy.”

 

That lead weight in her stomach flipped over once before sinking farther.

 

“You mean me.”

 

“Precisely.”

 

“Excuse me, but don’t I have a say in things?”

 

Polly jumped and was already half turned to look behind her when she caught herself and returned her focus purposely towards Laurel.  Her heart was beating as fast as if she had just run all the way to the concert hall from her flat and the weight in her stomach had been replaced by a surreal sort of tingle that spread from her neck all the way through to her fingertips and toes. 

 

Tom.  Tom was here.  Of course he was here, she amended, remembering quickly that it was the Dumas Quartet’s concert that Laurel had been attending.  But he was also Here at the same time Polly was Here.  Since the day of his not-death, Polly and Tom had never met in the Here and Now.  The thrill of it was exhilarating even as the frosty glare that had replaced the smile on Laurel’s face made any number of warning bells go off in her head.  How she had missed his footsteps, she wasn’t sure, but she was more than a little distracted at the moment; it was entirely possible that someone could have been putting on a firework display directly outside the hall and she wouldn’t have realized it.

 

Polly’s mind raced.  Tom was playing with fire, showing up now, but he was technically not infringing upon any aspect of their agreement.  Polly had been the one to say she never wanted to see him again, not him, and so it followed that he could look upon her in the Here and Now without consequence.  More than a little unfair, but Laurel was a faerie and stacking the deck was a skill she had been honing for centuries.

 

“You haven’t answered my question, Laurel,” repeated Tom, closer now.  Polly listened as his footsteps now echoed sharply through the hall.  It only took five steps for him to be directly behind Polly and he rested his hands gently but purposefully on her shoulders.  If she kept her head level, she couldn’t even see the tips of his fingers.  Polly stared resolutely forward as Tom gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze.  “I’m involved in this dilemma, so I should have a say, don’t you think?”

 

Laurel tilted her head slightly to the side.  The action was controlled and sharp, just as her words were.  “What would you say, Thomas Lynn?  Do you feel you are more qualified than your dear Polly to make a decision about life and death?”

 

“No,” he responded easily, refusing to rise to Laurel’s bait.  “But I do know that life and death aren’t things to be taken lightly and, especially where death is involved, the decision should not have to come down to just one person.  If death needs to be involved at all, of course.”  He added the final bit almost as an afterthought, though Polly could hear the challenge in his words as easily as Laurel did.

 

“And why would death not need to be involved?  I do believe that was part of our contract, was it not?”

 

“It was, though you seem to be unclear about the specifics of contract.  I thought you knew your deals better than that, Laurel.”

 

“Do not presume to know more than me where contracts are concerned, foolish Tom.  I have been making them for far longer than you have been upon this earth and will continue to do so long after you die, whether that is today or some time many years from now.”

 

“Then you will know that Polly has remained true to your contract.”

 

Laurel’s nose crinkled in displeasure, a completely incongruous expression with her otherwise prim facade.  “Are you honestly trying to tell me that the girl cares nothing for you and has not set eyes on you in years?  How much of a fool do you take me for?” she demanded.  A little of the terrible voice she had used earlier crept back into her tone.  It was enough to send a shiver racing up Polly’s spine.  At her shoulders, Tom’s hand tightened a fraction.

 

“I take you for a great fool if you do not believe me,” he retorted, not missing a beat.  Laurel’s mouth turned down slightly at the corners at the polite insult, though she otherwise held her tongue.  Proud being that she was, she was still not nearly as easily goaded as Polly realized she herself was.

 

“And every time you both disappeared from this realm?” Laurel asked after a pause.  Polly wanted to squirm, Laurel’s suspicious stare was so intense, and though she was speaking with Tom, her eyes remained fixed on Polly.  Polly swallowed nervously.  She wasn’t certain what Tom was trying to achieve by bluffing so completely to Laurel, but she trusted him enough to follow it through to the end.

 

“I admit, there were times when I could not stop myself from gazing upon her from a distance,” Tom sighed, “but only as an artist gazes upon his muse.”  Internally, Polly rolled her eyes.  Tom had made the mistake of once calling her his muse as they watched a symphony being born from a young composer’s mind while sitting in the Now and Here’s version of a coffee shop in Vienna.  Polly had told him to stop being so dramatic; he was talented by his own right and nothing she had done had made him a better player.  If anything, she made him worse from all of the times she nearly (or actually) broke his cello in some altercation with a giant or whatnot.  “That fault, as you no doubt realize, lies in me and is in no breach of contract.”

 

“And how do you propose I verify your assertion?”

 

“Is that really necessary?”

 

“It is.”  Laurel’s jaw was set at a stubborn angle that was unmistakable.  With that expression, Polly felt the lead weight return to her stomach and give something of a heave.  As much as Laurel had a gift for dangerously twisting words to work her will, she did her utmost to play unfairly as soon as actions were concerned.  Polly’s mind instantly flashed back to that golden pool and of Tom, sinking farther and farther the harder she tried to save him.

 

Behind her, she felt Tom deflate just a little.  A soft sigh escaped his lips.  She knew without turning around that his face looked as tired and defeated as he sounded.

 

“Let Polly leave and we’ll discuss it,” he said softly.  There was an unmistakable plea in his voice that made Laurel’s eyes, already focused on Tom, sharpen ever so slightly.  It was almost sick to watch, a predator closing in for the kill, but Polly refused to close her eyes.  “It seems your quarrel, as it has for many years, is with me.”

 

“Fine,” Laurel agreed quickly.  She turned her gaze to Polly.  “Leave us.”  Her tone brooked no argument, though Polly wanted desperately to refuse.  The last thing she wanted to do was leave Tom once more to Laurel’s mercy, but between the prompting nudge at her shoulders and Laurel’s piercing stare, Polly began to place one foot in front of the other.  Tom’s hands soon fell away from her shoulders, leaving behind only the memory of their warmth.

 

For just a moment – one petty, wretched moment – the spiteful side of her wanted nothing more than to turn around and look at Tom.  She wanted him to be able to see her hurt face nearly as much as she wanted to flaunt Laurel’s ridiculous contract right in front of her.  As her feet carried her past Laurel and closer to the lobby door, though, that moment passed.  She and Tom had a relationship that wasn't perfect; no one who met them would ever find them to be poster children for romance.

 

Love to Polly meant an extra meal left in her flat’s refrigerator when she had been writing far past the time the grocery store closed.  Love was the recording of a concert she couldn’t attend in person left in her purse while she was in a meeting.  Love was a soothing hand holding hers after a nurse had stitched up her latest mysterious injury.  Love was returned in the meals and the cleaning that were taken care of when rehearsals ran long, in a warning cry that meant the difference between a concussion and death when a giant attacked, and in the quite goodnights that were never goodbyes even as they were forced once more to go their separate ways for the evening.

 

Love was all of those things, though love certainly was not easy.  But that only made it all the more strong.  As much as Polly felt hurt in the moment, she knew her revenge wasn’t worth the momentary satisfaction it would bring.

 

Behind her, Tom and Laurel began talking again.  Their voices were so low that their words were indistinguishable from one another to Polly’s ears.  Her footsteps rang out sharply over the low current of their voices as she walked farther and farther away.

 

If Tom wanted Polly to leave, he had a reason for it.  She might not know the reason or like it even if she did, but she would go along with it for now.  They could have words later – many words, most likely – and if there was one thing more than anything that inspired her now it was that there would most definitely be a later.

 

That thought was promptly shaken from her head, though, as an anguished scream rang out in the hall.  Polly froze midstep.  A second scream quickly followed, and with it was mixed a sob.  The voice was almost unrecognizable as Tom’s but who else could it have been?  There were no other people present aside from herself and Laurel; she knew she wasn’t the one screaming, and the thought of such a sound escaping from Laurel was completely unthinkable.  Another scream sounded and then a sob, but this time the sobbing continued.  It fractured the silence of the hall, feeding on itself as its echoes multiplied.

 

She couldn’t be sure, but Polly thought she heard Tom pleading amidst the sobs.  She listened more carefully.  It was only then that Tom’s begging for Laurel to stop whatever it was that she was doing became clear.  The words made her heart twist painfully in her chest and her breath hitch in her throat.  What was happening?  What had Laurel done?  Polly wanted to turn around and help; inaction was something she was not accustomed to in any situation, let alone one where Tom was in danger.  Despite all of this, Polly’s body refused to move.  Her heart beat loudly in her ears and stomach heaved awkwardly, but still her feet remained resolutely where they were.

 

She might have remained where she was for an eternity: frozen in the ultimate struggle of indecision she would probably ever face.  She might have, but she didn’t.

 

“Polly, please… come back….”

 

Tom’s words, weak as they were and managed only between his cries of pain, carried clearly through the hall.  They were agony to hear; it took Polly a moment to realize her cheeks were wet because of the tears that were busy streaming down from the corners of her eyes.  She had never heard Tom sound as pained and close to death as he did then, but as movement returned to her body, Polly took a step towards the lobby followed quickly by another and yet another.  Soon, she was running full-tilt away from the concert hall.

 

 _That wasn’t Tom, it wasn’t him and those weren’t his words_ … she thought as her mind raced nearly as quickly as the rest of her body.  Polly flew through the lobby, disturbing the last few straggling concert-goers from their conversation.  She wove her way through the now-thin crowd and down the steps, miraculously without slipping despite the wet stones.  She ran until she was winded and coughing, which wasn’t very long given the recent incident with the dragon, but was, at least, long enough to see her entirely clear of the concert hall.  She even made sure to round a corner before she sunk down on her heels. The rough brickwork of the building she was next to grabbed at her coat all the way down.

 

Polly crouched there, coughing and crying and sputtering, as the reality of what had just happened began to settle over her.  Something had happened in those few moments after Laurel and Tom started speaking privately.  Try as she might, though, Polly couldn’t imagine what could have been said in such a short amount of time that could have led to Tom’s pained screams and cries.  She couldn’t even imagine that she had been right in running away as she had; being right should by no means feel as miserable as she felt right now.  What had felt like the right decision moments ago was quickly feeling as if it were the complete opposite.

 

And now, all she could manage was a coughing fit that left her vision blackening around the edges whilst she huddled next to a strange building in the cold night air.  Truly a hero, she was.  No one braver, no one smarter than Polly, the woman who ran away from her adversary and left her lover to die a horrible death.

 

She didn’t know how long she remained next to the building – long enough for her breathing to return to normal and her fingers and toes to all go completely numb from the damp evening chill.  Polly rocked experimentally on the balls of her feet.  Her legs felt tight and numb, like they were to be stuck in their crouched position forever.  She needed to get up.  She needed to go back for Tom, to find out what had happened to him and see if there was anything she could do now, even if she should have stayed around earlier to make sure nothing needed doing in the first place.

 

“You look like you could use some assistance, my dear Polly,” came a voice from somewhere above her.  Polly’s head whipped back so quickly that she knocked the back of it against the building.  Her eyes filled with fresh tears and her vision was obscured frustratingly by white stars, but neither were enough to make her mistake the face that gazed down at her just then.

 

It was Tom’s face.

 

Polly was glad there was no one else nearby to hear the strangled cry of unadulterated joy that escaped her throat just then.  Pins and needles aside, she leaped up, almost ramming the top of her head into Tom’s chin.  Before he could say another word, she had her arms wrapped around him almost as tight as they would go.

 

“What… but how… what…?” she babbled into his coat, wanting to ask so many questions but not knowing where best to start.

 

Tom laughed easily, his arms encircling Polly with just as much eagerness if marginally less force.  “Three very excellent questions, my dear.  And I will explain them all shortly.”

 

“You don’t even know what I wanted to ask!” Polly feigned outrage and took a step back so that she could look Tom in the eye.  For a moment, she just looked, taking in the long line of Tom’s nose and the tired hollows tracing down from the corners of his mouth.  His fair hair flopped into his eyes and was slightly matted with sweat.  To Polly he had never looked more beautiful.  “Tom,” she began, quieter now, “how are we doing this, Here and Now?  How am I looking at you and Laurel isn’t breathing down our necks demanding either your head or mine?”

 

“I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of amending your contract with Laurel.  It think you will find it to your liking.”

 

“Does it mean that I can see you whenever I want?”

 

“More like only when you don’t want.  Between the two of us, we were fairly easily able to convince her of your great indifference towards me.”

 

Something in Polly’s mind clicked into place.  Slowly, a true smile spread across her face.  It felt good to smile like that.  It felt as if she hadn’t done so in years.  If she were being perfectly honest with herself, it probably truly had been years since she smiled like that.

 

“I most definitely didn’t want to see you tonight,” she tested.  “You ruined my chat with Laurel and just when I was hoping for a bit of peace and quiet, here you are again.”

 

“I apologize for the latter, though perhaps not the former,” grinned Tom.

 

“The only way to see you forever was to run away from you when you needed me most.”  Polly laughed bitterly.  “Why oh why must everything be so backwards with us?  Just once, I’d like everything to be as it seems.”

 

Tom laughed at that.  It was a tired laugh, but a true one filled with a heady mix of relief and joy.  The feeling was infectious.  Soon, Polly found herself smiling equally as joyfully.  She didn’t know how long they remained on that street corner, holding onto each other as if they hadn’t seen each other in years, but it didn’t really matter in the end.  As long as she didn’t want to hold him, she could hold him for as long as she liked.  It might have been all of her years being around faeries or it might have been the recent bump on the head, but for whatever reason that logic made a strange sort of sense.  Polly laughed as she leaned up and kissed Tom for both the millionth time and the first time.

 

The night was still damp and the chill had deepened as the hours marched steadily on in their progression to morning, but as Polly and Tom walked down the sidewalk with one arm around the other’s waist, all that mattered was the person at their side.  There would always be damp, just as there would always be dragons and there would always be Laurel, but for right now, it was just Polly and Tom.  And that was all that mattered.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for the prompt, yosituna! I hope you enjoyed your gift.
> 
> I started out wanting to use something of a musical form for this story and, once my brain had latched on to the idea of dragons being involved, Beethoven's 5th Symphony seemed like the perfect fit. I had a musicology professor once who broke down that symphony into a story about villagers slaying a menacing dragon and since then that piece has been tied to dragons in my mind. It also worked out that the tempos of each of the movements worked well with the pacing of the story. So thank you, Beethoven, for meshing so nicely with Polly and Tom's adventures.


End file.
